The silver halide color photographic light sensitive material normally incorporates a combination of yellow, magenta and cyan couplers. Widely used magenta couplers are 5-pyrazolone series magenta couplers. Because of secondary absorption near 430 run shown by the dye formed upon developing, 5-pyrazolone series magenta couplers pose various problems in color reproduction. In an attempt to solve these problems, researchers have studied new magenta couplers, resulting in the development of pyrazolotriazole series couplers such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,725,065, 3,810,761, 3,758,309 and 3,725,067.
These couplers have a number of advantages, including little secondary absorption, which is advantageous for color reproducibility, and excellent storage stability in the presence of formalin.
However, pyrazolotriazole series couplers are less sensitive than conventional 5-pyrazolone series magenta couplers because of their self-suppressing property. They have another drawback of coated sample sensitivity reduction during storage under high-temperature high-humidity conditions.
Sill another drawback is hue discrepancy on finished color printing paper among different printing machines (hereinafter referred to as printers) used to print a color negative film on the printing paper.
This phenomenon is assumed to occur mainly for the following reasons. In printing color printing paper from a color negative film using a printer, the printer first (1) measures the blue, green and red densities of the color negative film, then (2) converts these measurements to color printing paper exposure amounts, and (3) exposes the color printing paper with that exposure amount. Various printers are commercially available; the spectral sensitivity of the detector used in the light measurement process of (1) above can vary among types of these printers. Also, hue discrepancy can occur, in association with the spectral absorption properties of the coloring dyes in the color negative film, for example, due to insufficient half-value width or spectral absorption property fluctuation with concentration change. Some of the above-described pyrazolotriazole series magenta couplers show wide spectral absorption property fluctuation with concentration change, which is assumed to be a major cause of the wide printer-to-printer fluctuation.
The other problem is that the photographic characteristics given by the magenta coupler sometimes varies following to the change of processing condition, for example, pH variation of developing liquid.
For this reason, there has been a need for the development of a silver halide color photographic light-sensitive material containing a pyrazolotriazole series magenta coupler and having high sensitivity, excellent storage stability, reduced printer-to-printer fluctuation and improved stability against the change of processing condition.